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Barbeque Season is Here and So Is Mad Cow Disease
Tuesday, May 27, 2003
It's barbeque time again. Victoria and Memorial Day weekend in Southwestern Ontario signals the unofficial start of the summer barbeque season. I've been known to shiver in front of the barbeque in January. But it's a lot better in the warm weather months. Get those steaks ready.Unfortunately there was a little bad news in steak country last week. Lyle VanClief, Canada's agriculture minister, announced that Mad Cow disease or BSE was found in an animal on an Alberta farm. And with that, consumers and barbeque lovers across the country were having sober second thoughts.
It's too bad for Canadian beef industry. No matter how the system works, no matter how much Lyle VanClief pleads and cajoles, it just doesn't matter. Collectively, the Canadian beef industry got an anvil on their head. The reverberations from such a disaster are just now coming to light.
Mad Cow or Bovine spongiform encephalopathyis (BSE) is a chronic, degenerative disorder affecting the central nervous system of cattle. It's believed humans can develop new-variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease if they eat meat from infected animals. Both diseases kill brain cells, and more than 100 people in Europe have died since 1995 after eating meat from cattle with BSE. In short, it is a nightmare. Most of the time North American consumers don't much care about their food supply just as long as it's cheap. But BSE's nickname "Mad Cow" catches people's attention. Nobody wants to go there.
The Canadian Food Inspection agency is working to find some of the answers to this huge problem. Herds have been quarantined across Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia. Some good news came out Sunday. The herd, which contained the diseased animal, tested negative for BSE. Thankfully, so far, the system has worked and barbeque'ers should be assured that none of this beef got in the food chain.
But back to the anvil on our head. I was very surprised when I first heard about Mad Cow disease. For those of us involved in agriculture, this was an economic 911. The reverberations stopped dead the "goings on" of the small minions of bureaucrats who handle Canadian agriculture policy. Local producers with cattle in their barns scrambled for contingency plans.
Unfortunately, there isn't a lot they can do other than hope the federal government can get to the bottom of this. But what do you do, keep feeding cattle until the market comes back or send them to slaughter before the price bloodbath gets even worse. And you surely hope the barbeque folks don't switch to fish.
With 70% of our beef production going to the United States, a temporary ban on our exports isn't hard to figure out. A few years ago I had the opportunity to speak to some Ontario beef producers in Stratford, Ontario. At the time, BSE was wild in England. At the time I said if we ever had Mad Cow in Canada it would back up right into our beef barns and grain bins. That's exactly what is happening.
It comes at a time when our relationship with the United States is a bit tentative. Mad Cow can only make it worse. Soon after it was discovered, our borders started to back up somewhat like 911. It got so bad last Thursday at the Sarnia border crossing, trucks were backed up over 7 kilometers. Some reports said Canadian truckers were even being hassled over the meat in their sandwiches. This is serious business and in many ways you can't blame the Americans for being paranoid about Mad Cow. They don't want that anvil to land on them.
In addition to the United States, Australia, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and Taiwan have also joined the ban on Canadian beef. The European Union isn't going to join in the ban. But these small countries are "small potatoes" compared with the ban on exports into the US. Our beef and cattle trade added up to $3.6 billion in 2002. Mexico, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan accounted for $400 million in 2002. But right now, none of this is doing a lot of good.
Jean Chretien has chimed in. He went out for his obligatory "beef dinner." The next day, he made sure to tell the media he was in fine shape and he'd be serving the visiting French foreign minister Alberta beef. Chretien will surely continue this menu. When the Americans banned PEI potatoes a few years ago, he served George W. Bush PEI potatoes when he came to the G7 Summit in Alberta. Clearly, everybody is working to get this thing back to normal.
But, unfortunately, the damage has been done. Last Saturday at a wedding reception, my celebrity in my other writing career came in handy. As the guests were about to start eating their beef, I was asked about the Mad Cow disease outbreak. I told everybody within ear shot Mad Cow is a calamity for the Canadian beef industry, but so far there is no evidence it got in the food chain. Hearing that, everybody dug in.
However, not everybody will. You can bet barbeque'ers across Canada are checking out the chicken, pork and fish this week. All because of one beef animal culled out of the food chain near a little town in Alberta. It didn't take much to do it. But it surely will take a lot of effort to get beef back on everybody's grill.
Philip Shaw, farms 830 acres near Dresden, Ontario. He holds a Masters of Agricultural Economics and Business Degree from the University of Guelph and is a well-known commentator on agricultural issues in print, on radio and over satellite in Canada and the United States. In the Chatham-Kent Times, Phil will use his frank and forthright writing style to address political and economic issues from the local to the international stage. He is a keen observer of political life at all levels, reads widely and has travelled the world to gather fodder for his column. See what's At Issue this week.
